Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

The following were the objectives of the assessment study:

1. To document satisfaction level of the callers who had called the helpline
2. To assess the effectiveness of the helpline’s service provisioning strategy

In order to fulfil the above-mentioned objectives, callers, counsellors and program team members were interviewed using quantitative and qualitative tools developed for the purpose. 173 self-filled quantitative survey forms were received from the callers. 18 callers were interviewed for their qualitative insights along with 5 counsellors and 2 program team members.

• More male caller-respondents participated in both qualitative and quantitative surveys.
• The participation rate was high among young adults and old adults (34 years or less of age). More than 80% of the caller respondents for both the qualitative and the quantitative survey belonged to the above age group.
• Participation was higher amongst the caller-respondents who were graduates and post-graduates. More than 65.0% of the caller-respondents for both the qualitative and the quantitative survey were graduates and post graduates.
• Participation in the quantitative survey was higher amongst the caller-respondents who were students. More caller-respondents who were engaged full-time participated in the qualitative survey.
• Participation was higher amongst the caller-respondents who were single for both qualitative and the quantitative surveys.
• More than 10% of the caller-respondents participated from each of the states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal in the quantitative interactions. For the qualitative interactions more than 30% of the caller-respondents were from the three states of Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
• Participation was higher amongst the caller-respondents who resided in the urban parts of the different states.
• Participation of the caller-respondents from other backward castes (OBC) and scheduled castes (SC) were also noticed.
• Caller respondents also participated from the LGBT community.
• Participation was also seen from caller-respondents who lived with different types of disabilities.

The participation of the caller-respondents is highly skewed by gender, age-group, economic engagement and relationship status.

• Social media platforms emerged to be the most popular source of information about iCALL for the caller-respondents and the counsellors.
• Caller-respondents have suggested improvements in the outreach materials about iCALL in the different social media platforms. The suggestions include sharing the details of the services provided by iCALL especially in regional languages, information about some special support for those who felt suicidal, use of infographics, availability of the helpline 24*7, sharing videos to create awareness about the general psycho-social and mental health helplines and how to keep oneself safe from those amongst others.

The iCALL team could allocate dedicated resources to manage and share relevant information on their social media handles ensuring greater outreach.

• Though many of the caller-respondents could not recall the year when they connected with iCALL for the first time, a majority of the participants connected with iCALL in 2022 and 2023.
• Majority of the caller-respondents mentioned that after getting connected with the iCALL helpline, the wait-time was moderate to long before they got to interact with the counsellors explaining their concern.
• Though the caller-respondents mentioned more than one reason for connecting with the iCALL helpline, emotional distress emerged to be a major reason.

The iCALL team could engage more resources to reduce the waiting time and also focus on spreading awareness about stress coping mechanisms on their website and other social media handles.

• The caller-respondents were very satisfied with aspects like their comfort in discussing their concern with the counsellors and more than 70.0% of them found the counsellors to be empathetic.
• 86.5% of the caller-respondents found the counsellors to be non-judgmental and more than 71.0% were satisfied with the time allocated to them for sharing their concerns.
• However, the caller-respondents expected some more information sharing about their concerns from the counsellors and were moderately satisfied with the referrals provided to them by the counsellors.
• Respondent callers mentioned that their emotional wellbeing had improved after connecting with iCALL and they were able to sustain a good quality of life.
• The iCALL team can consider updating their social media handles with information to increase the knowledge and awareness of the callers on different psycho-social and mental health concerns and coping mechanisms for each of them. A dedicated team could be deployed for the purpose. Along with this, there can be regular updates on the range of services provided by them.
• The team needs to consider options for onboarding more counsellors to increase the diversity in counselling language. This will help caller-respondents communicate their concerns in the local vernacular language on one hand and also increase the outreach of the telephonic helpline. The iCALL team can collaborate with the placement cell of TISS, or even use their social media handles to disseminate information about vacancies for counsellors.
• The iCALL team needs to consider the possibility of increasing the frequency of capacity building sessions for the counsellors and also increase the number of mock calls so that they get exposed to a greater variety of concerns and modalities to address those.
• The iCALL team needs to consider technical issues so that the caller-respondents have to wait for smaller durations of time. Also, they can set up a management information system (MIS) in collaboration with some third-party agency to follow up with the caller-respondents at a regular frequency. This on one hand will facilitate a follow up on the wellbeing of the caller-respondents and on the other, gather feedback from them to further strengthen and improve the service provisioning of iCALL.